An ambulance with yellow flashing lights and moaning horns awakened me late last night. Three men in blue jump suits hopped out of the vehicle and hurriedly entered the house through the screened porch door. A few minutes later, they carried out a man on a flat board. This man had a plastic mask over his white beard with tubing attached to a cylindrical metal cannister. The men lifted him into the ambulance, shut the back doors, and quickly drove away into the darkness.
I had a good sleep after all of that, though. I live in the bottom of a storm drain. It’s safe from people, about 6 feet below the street curb and sidewalk, and difficult for less agile animals to enter. I can squeeze through the small rectangular opening, then jump 6 feet down onto a matted rug of leaves where I make my bed. The drain floods when it rains, so I seek higher ground by creeping underneath a house’s crawl space. The location underneath a house and in close proximity to disposed leftovers makes these spaces popular abodes; they are filled with opossums, snakes, and other animals, leaving little vacancy for others. I prefer the seclusion and dignity of the storm drain.
I yawn, deeply arching my back, extending my legs, flexing my claws and pointing my head toward the storm drain’s slotted steel roof. Quietly and effortlessly I spring up to where the drain meets the road and my claws grab onto the concrete, just enough for me to pull my body to street level. Carefully scanning through the small rectangular storm drain opening, I don’t see any people, dogs, or cars. I walk cautiously and alertly onto the narrow sidewalk.
It’s a crisp spring morning and the sun is just starting to rise. Mourning doves sing. ‘Coooo cooooo’. I admire the early morning’s flaming orange and red horizon. The street is lined on each side with large, 3 story homes, yards decorated with tulips, black-eyed susans, daffodils and purple daisies. White dogwood flowers bloom. Japanese Maple trees are sprouting light burgundy leaves from their branches, and magnolia trees’ green waxy leaves shine in the sun.
A small pond sits just behind the street’s cul-de-sac with surrounding pine trees and a single-track walking trail. Many insects live by the pond, and I enjoy hunting and eating them. Birds sing within the tree line near the pond, and a light breeze carries floral scents. The sun’s full light reflecting off of the placid pond and down the street exposes the suburban world’s details.
Peering at the street from behind a pink rose bush, I see a pair of humans walking side by side on the sidewalk. They both wear white masks over their faces and walk quickly, looking down at the sidewalk. Further down the street another pair stands outside of an open garage, inspecting a bicycle. They wear masks, too. Other masked people walk their leashed dogs, all keeping far away from each other.
A different group of masked men and women in long-sleeved yellow shirts and thick tan pants wield loud machines around the houses. They use their machines to cut dark green grass and blow leaves. One man stands atop a ladder, trimming crepe myrtles. They wear goggles and masks. These machines are the only noise to be heard outside songbirds’ chatter.
Peering into windows along the street, I notice adults perusing smartphones, talking and laughing into their computer, and sitting in silence staring out of a window. A masked man sitting on his steps tells a neighbor on the sidewalk that he missed seeing his daughter’s graduation. ‘This makes me so sad and so angry’, he says.
Dusk falls. On cue, I hear a wobbly voice from the end of the cul-de-sac sing “KIIIIIITTTYYY. DIIIINNNNEERRRR!”. Keeping low to the ground and out of sight, I run to her porch, weaving in and out of Bradford pear trees along the sidewalk’s edge.
She gives me food every day. She has whitish gray hair and stoops over her cane while walking. She wears thick glasses, precariously hanging over her nose, a cotton dress hanging to her ankles. Her grey hair stands firm, freshly curled. She smiles whenever she sees me and often extends a supinated hand. I’ve let her touch my nose before. She slowly bends over and the places down scrambled eggs, mounding out of a thin porcelain teacup painted in 19th century Japanese fashion. I voraciously consume the eggs, leaving the teacup’s inside shining clean.
Sated from the scrambled eggs, I wander out into the quiet, tranquil evening to hunt crickets and grasshoppers. Bullfrogs call from the pond and cicadas sing in oscillating unison. I hear deer feet crunching underbrush through the woods. A family of fox lumber through thorns and poison ivy. I crouch down among the pond’s pines, curl into a ball on top of a bed of dried leaves and close my eyes.
The Ruse 